We awoke to a beautiful morning taking the short walk into the old Town to put together some form of breakfast from our favourite cafe, a couple of toasted sandwiches a cuppa and a free helping of sensational views
We left Motovun just after 10a.m.delayed for at least 10 minutes by a van collecting recyclables in the narrow street - there was no room us to squeeze past !
Cycling down from our fortress our mission this morning was to link up with the Parenzana rail trail partly because it reportedly offered great views and primarily because it guided us towards our destination at San Rocco in Italy
The Parenzana trail crosses Italy, Slovenia and Croatia for 130 kms on various terrain types and is promoted for its beautiful scenery and large rail tunnels.
Our initial experience for the first 10-15 kms was not too bad although Kev spilt the first of his blood for the day when caught by blackberry type thorns soon after leaving Motovun.
With the trail seemingly disappearing every time we came to an intersection we took to the road and launched into a 7 km climb to the picturesque town of Bujie. En route we were passed by what almost looked like an episode from Top Gear with a skidding Lamborghini leading a pack of more sedate high class sports cars around the bends and of course with H giving the first dick head a well deserved 2 fingered salute !
After Bujie we worked our way to the Slovenian border crossing point Henley delighted to have another stamp in his passport although mightily peeved that he was taking out of the country nearly 70 Kuna ($10) in unspent Croatian money !
We found our way around a beautiful resort style sea area to Piran before heading inland once again picking up the hard to find Parenzana.
It was on an unmade section of the Parenzana with rocks and scree that disaster struck. The first I knew was when a cyclist going in the other direction babbled something at me - thinking he was asking for directions I kept cycling saying I only speak English before glancing back to see Kev trapped under his bike !
After getting to Kev the Slovenian cyclist had already freed him and after establishing he was reasonably OK (only loosing a litre of blood a minute) he cycled off.
By this time H had used quite a number of profanities to describe the condition of the trail and when not swearing was also trying to stem the blood loss from his grazed legs.
I did fear concussion at one point as we went back to the crash site to look for Kev's supposedly missing pump with H now cursing about that as well - after 10 minutes of looking we went back to his bike to find it still securely strapped on the other side of his down tube !
Back on our bikes we had only gone another 100 metres at only 10 km/hr when I heard another bang behind me and a heap more profanities !
This time Kev had done some fairly significant damage to his elbow with a haematoma immediately evident !
Fast forward through the now even worse cursing H was convinced that his braking combined with a poor surface had somehow contributed to his falls !
I left Kev so I could check how long the unmade trail went for (only another 400 metes) and by my return Kev had finally worked out what had gone wrong.
It appeared that the roughish terrain had worked Kevs front pannier rack lug (i.e. the pannier rack he is not using !) loose causing the rack to drop onto his wheel and Kev to go flying over the handlebars on two separate occasions !
Now looking like something out of a horror movie with his bloodied bandages and a blood splattered top we continued on to Koper.
I don't easily get grossed out but Henley succeeded when at one point stopped on the bicycle track on the Koper seafront Henley delightedly yelled out " hey Litchy have a look at this" !
Expecting to see a topless female sun baking I hurried over to be taken aback by a grinning Henley squeezing his Haematoma on his Elbow causing an almost femoral blood spurt on to the surrounding bike path !
With my lunch back down we somehow made it through the really busy city of Koper with enough blood left in H for us to get to our accommodation at San Rocco just across the waters from the bustling city of Trieste.
H with blood spoilt bandages made it to the room where a shower , antiseptic cream and heaps of band aids and bandaging almost made him look human again !
Dinner constituted a pizza down on the picturesque seafront with H trying to replace lost blood litres with equivalent alcohol ones !
The big test will be tomorrow to see if H can get out of bed without bringing the sheets with him and whether his battered body is capable of our long ride through Trieste.
I'm sure Kev would appreciate well wishes feedback at his address at kevinhenketwb54@gmail.com
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